The Declaration of Independence:
"In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
The Bdubs Thread Tag Proclamation:
"Just catching up with the thread, there might be things that I've missed still, but I'll try my best to provide answers, and engage in the conversation. Please, be assured that I'm genuine and sincere here, and I hope my words will convey just as much. If not, I apologize, and will try to clarify myself if need be.
From my personal point of view, as someone who has moderated forums almost as big, if not as big as Era, this reaction to the addition of tags is genuinely surprising. I personally like them enough, I think they're an extremely useful feature, and I remember the times when I first posted on Era a year or two ago, feeling absolutely lost in what felt like a humongous maze-like amount of threads, not neatly organized enough for me to get to where I wanted when I wanted it. I have seen many forums with such feature before, whether implemented from the start, or later afterwards, and I always found this incredibly useful and practical. I have never seen users on those forums being so vividly against this feature, ever. This is a first to me, truthfully.
Now, I'm left wondering why is that the case here. I'm reminded of how changes is often met with negative reactions every time it happened on any social media networks I've been on in the past 15 years. At times, I was part of those negative voices, at others, I didn't care or was happy about the changes. But with each changes, the same negative reactions were still there. Do we fundamentally dislike change as human beings? Probably so, I suppose. But then, is this change a benign one that people will grow to get used to eventually, like we all grew to use and (maybe) like the many iterations of Twitter/Facebook/etc, or is it one akin to the major redesign that Snapchat did a few years ago that lowkey killed their platform because people hated it way too much? The thing is, this tag feature, in essence, is really nowhere near a major redesign, not even remotely so, it feels like a very minor change to me, so I'm still left feeling astounded at the intense reactions we initially received about this feature. I'm genuinely trying to understand it, and I hope you can believe it, but I'm still struggling here.
But maybe my perception is wrong? Surely my personal experiences are mine, and many users have different and valid experiences and opinions as well, and I don't want to negate that either. And I'm not saying that this feature, as is, is perfect. It can be improved, and I've seen people sharing photoshopped screenshots of what they think might make this feature better. I love those, I think they're nice and open up a lot of possibilities, granted that they are even possible to execute on the technical side. There's always ways to improve and perfect, and we're definitely open to that for sure, as proven by the many number of iterations a feature like Giftbot has been through since release. But this feature is here to stay still, we genuinely think it will help a lot of people and will make Era a much easier forum to navigate into. Hopefully we will reach that point in the future. We're already working on bettering it based on feedback we received. We're really trying, and I'm sorry if it seems it isn't enough.
I've seen suggestions about the fact we should have created a thread to announce the feature preemptively, in order to let people know about it and be prepared for it. I think that's a fair one, although maybe a bit difficult to execute technically. See, we don't have a fixed schedule, most of the staff being volunteers means that most of us work on Era when we can, oftentimes juggling between personal/family life, and professional life, and that doesn't even account for timezone differences. The absence of an announcement here was definitely not out malice nor because we wanted to "be sneaky about it", it's mostly because we didn't take the proper time to plan for it, partly because we didn't think we needed one for such a minor change we thought wouldn't be met with such negativity, and partly because we worked on this feature for quite some time and wanted it to go live as soon as possible, excitedly so. Some on staff (I wasn't part of Era back then) also have some reservations about the legitimacy of an announcement thread, vividly reminded of how that didn't help things in the slightest when Era got the 2.0 upgrade back in 2018. Such a thread didn't help to mitigate feelings at all, and apparently 2.0 rollout was still met with intense negativity back then as well anyway. With that being said, I'm in favor of making announcement threads still (accompanied with a site-wide notification), and we'll try to let our users know of upcoming features rollout a few days before they happen, as much as it is possible. It might help, it might not either, but it costs nothing to try for sure.
The other thing that was talked about most is about the creation of an official General Feedback Thread, which we have thought of, and even tried in the past. Again, I wasn't active (and much less part of staff) when it happened, but apparently one already existed before, and turned into such a shitshow that the Staff Team back then decided to scrap it entirely as a result, and to prioritize the Contact Us form over it. I do see why, and I understand it, it's a thorny situation. People have abused the existence of such thread in the past, in ways that became untenable for us to handle properly. That kind of thread is usually a very easy way for many bad faith actors to come and create trouble in a way that we felt wasn't healthy overall. Suggesting one seems like a proper idea as a user, and I had that exact same idea when I got contacted to become a mod back in August. But now, after a bit more experience under the belt, I'm left wondering how would such thread work in a way where users feel heard and listened to, where bad-faith actors are weeded out and don't spoil the conversation, and where staff feels safe enough to freely engage without being overtly antagonized. It's a tricky question, and I'm interested in whichever ideas you all might over this.
Because right now, and I'm aware this isn't something a lot of people want to hear, but our staff team is wearing thin. Most of us are exhausted, mentally, emotionally, simply because this job, in essence just is. We are often confronted to the worse this forum has to offer, on a daily basis, and it takes a toll on us all sooner or later. I remember someone in a post mentioning the fact that we have to take the higher ground and be willing to take any kind of criticism at all times, and that's generally the mindset I'm coming from indeed. However, that also generally leaves me drained, with poor mental-health, and needing regular breaks from moderating (or from even interacting with the forum as a whole) just to recenter myself and feel good enough again. This is, in big part, the reason of our staff turn-over. People get burned out doing this, and end up leaving because they couldn't handle it anymore. This is how we lost many of our minority mods as well (because the mental and emotional toll on us is very often THAT much bigger than for the rest of the team), who often are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to replace. I myself have already thought about quitting the staff team half a dozen times in less than a year already. The apparently common sentiment that mods are easily recruited, and that they easily agree to become staff, and dedicate their time and energy to this forum, is sadly far from our actual reality, and the reason why it makes any single departure that much harder to handle.
This isn't a "woe is me" bit, because I also definitely agreed to do this voluntarily, and because I also know that as an admin, I do have power over other users in this forum, and I do not wish to wield it unfairly and unnecessarily, I feel a huge responsibility over this, knowing the power balance can be shifted when people interact with me, solely because of the existence of the staff title. Quite frankly I often think I'm not worthy of it in the slightest, but I still feel like I ought to try, just because Era is an important place to me, one of the rare ones in which I feel safe enough to be myself. Rest assured, many people on the Staff Team feel similarly as well.
Sorry for this tangential bit here, I hope people won't think I'm trying to deflect, I'm genuinely trying to share my perspective, but feel free to ignore it if isn't helping to see the bigger picture. I kinda lost the thread of this answer, and I probably missed a lot of things I wanted to talk about in the first place but I feel I wrote so much already. But I do hope that this opens up a dialogue, hopefully a productive one. I have taken notes about what needs to be done in order to avoid this situation from happening in the future. I can't promise that you all will like all of what we have in store, but I'll try to make sure we communicate better about those future features, hopefully it will better prepare our community for them, and make our users feel heard and accounted for.
So far, I think those steps can be implemented easily in the future:
- An announcement thread about a new feature being added, a few days before it's been added, with a site-wide notification. Maybe screenshots to showcase the feature if we have proper ones at the ready.
- An official feedback thread about the new feature as soon as it's added, with a site-wide notification, in order to let people have a space to voice their opinions on it as well as ways to maybe help make it better. We won't necessarily always change or tweak a feature, but if the feedback is solid enough, we definitely might.
We are a community of tens of thousands of users. As such, it's always going to be difficult to satisfy each and every one of us, truthfully, and I hope that it is something people are also aware of and keep in mind. With such a huge number of members, there's no other way to go than trying to compromise and make concessions. However, we should still try to open a line of discussion, and hopefully reach a point where most of us are in a good-enough place with it all.
I definitely want to try that."
Everything’s normal no issues
no doubt
